Merchant Terrace in Ravenscourt Park proves good things come in small packages

I'm the editor of our weekly Hot Property section and Deputy Editor of City A.M. Magazine. I also review set menus for business lunches for the Working Lunch column as well as writing arts reviews and travel pieces.

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Melissa York

The white townhouse facades of Merchant Terrace

Building new homes takes years; that’s why it’s more important for a developer to know where the market is going than where it’s at. With rumours of oversupply at the top end of the market in some areas and a bubble blooming on the horizon, it’s perhaps wise to think small. And that’s something London developer Fruition Properties has particular expertise in.

“If we had a 400 unit development in the works, I might be worried,” says managing director Mani Khiroya. “But as our largest scheme is 17 units, I don’t see it touching us. It’s a completely different product.”

Fruition has been building boutique residential apartments since 2004 and it’s seen the business double in size in the last two years. It’s this confidence in the appeal of a more “bespoke” product that has allowed Khiroya to open his latest development next door to a huge Linden Homes scheme, King’s Row, in between Hammersmith and Chiswick.

Merchant Terrace, as it’s been christened, sits on the site of an old warehouse and a 60s office block five minutes away from the 10-hectare Ravenscourt Park, a tube station bearing the same name, a primary school, a prep school and the new West London Free School, making it an ideal location for families, particularly migrating away from Chiswick and Kensington & Chelsea in search of better value.

“We’ve noticed a lot of people moving away from those areas and those people are used to living in traditional townhouses,” Khiroya says. So that’s what Fruition has created: eight four-bedroom, three-storey, white-stucco-fronted townhouses, with three outside terraces apiece – the one on the roof accessed via a nifty electronic skylight – and underground car parking spaces.

They’re pretty much identical in size – ranging from 2,308 to 2,421sqft – and prices are expected to start at £2.495m. The white facade continues on to the developer’s first office block next door, a 6,000sqft building that’s already piqued the interest of a tenant in the charity sector.